Guthrunarhvot — Guthrun's Inciting · Tianmu Anglican Church

From the Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows

The Guðrúnarhvöt (Old Norse: "Guthrun's Inciting") is the penultimate poem of the Codex Regius and the beginning of the end of the Völsung cycle. The poem opens with Guthrun — widow of Sigurth, widow of Atli, now wife of King Jonak — arming her last surviving sons, Hamther and Sorli, to avenge their half-sister Svanhild, whom the Gothic king Jormunrek had trampled to death beneath horses' hooves. The sons ride out knowing they will not return. Then Guthrun, alone, speaks her final lament: three husbands, two murdered brothers, slain sons, a trampled daughter, and a life the sea itself refused to end. The poem is both an incitement and a requiem — the last words of the most grief-stricken woman in Germanic legend.

The poem belongs to the Ermanarich cycle, which entered Norse tradition from fourth-century Gothic history. Jordanes recorded that Ermanarich had a woman named Sunilda torn apart by horses; her brothers Sarus and Ammius wounded but failed to kill him. By the time the story reached Iceland, Sunilda had become Svanhild, daughter of Sigurth and Guthrun, and her avengers had become Hamther and Sorli, sons of Guthrun by her third husband Jonak. The blending of the Sigurth and Ermanarich legends probably took place before the eighth century. The poem itself is generally dated to eleventh-century Iceland, and the title "Guthrunarhvot" really applies only to the first eight stanzas — the rest is another Guthrun lament, following the tradition of the first and second Guthrun lays.

This is Henry Adams Bellows' translation from The Poetic Edda (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1923). The translation was verified against the Project Gutenberg digitised edition (ebook #73533), transcribed from the original 1923 printed text.

Introductory Note

The two concluding poems in the Codex Regius, the Guthrunarhvot (Guthrun’s Inciting) and the Hamthesmol (The Ballad of Hamther), belong to a narrative cycle connected with those of Sigurth, the Burgundians, and Atli (cf. Gripisspo, introductory note) by only the slenderest of threads. Of the three early historical kings who gradually assumed a dominant place in Germanic legend, Ermanarich, king of the East Goths in the middle of the fourth century, was actually the least important, even though Jordanes, the sixth century author of De Rebus Getecis, compared him to Alexander the Great. Memories of his cruelty and of his tragic death, however, persisted along with the real glories of Theoderich, a century and a half later, and of the conquests of Attila, whose lifetime approximately bridged the gap between Ermanarich’s death and Theoderich’s birth.

Chief among the popular tales of Ermanarich’s cruelty was one concerning the death of a certain Sunilda or Sanielh, whom, according to Jordanes, he caused to be torn asunder by wild horses because of her husband’s treachery. Her brothers, Sarus and Ammius, seeking to avenge her, wounded but failed to kill Ermanarich. In this story is the root of the two Norse poems included in the Codex Regius. Sunilda easily became the wife as well as the victim of the tyrant, and, by the process of legend-blending so frequently observed, the story was connected with the more famous one of the Nibelungs by making her the daughter of Sigurth and Guthrun. To account for her brothers, a third husband had to be found for Guthrun; the Sarus and Ammius of Jordanes are obviously the Sorli and Hamther, sons of Guthrun and Jonak, of the Norse poems. The blending of the Sigurth and Ermanarich legends probably, though not certainly, took place before the story reached the North, in other words before the end of the eighth century.

Regarding the exact status of the Guthrunarhvot and the Hamthesmol there has been a great deal of discussion. That they are closely related is obvious; indeed the first parts of the two poems are nearly identical in content and occasionally so in actual diction. The annotator, in his concluding prose note, refers to the second poem as the “old” ballad of Hamther, wherefore it has been assumed by some critics that the composer of the Guthrunarhvot used the Hamthesmol, approximately as it now stands, as the source of part of his material. The extant Hamthesmol, however, is almost certainly a patchwork; part of it is in Fornyrthislag (cf. Introduction), including most of the stanzas paralleled in the Guthrunarhvot, and likewise the stanza followed directly by the reference to the “old” ballad, while the rest is in Malahattr. The most reasonable theory, therefore, is that there existed an old ballad of Hamther, all in Fornyrthislag, from which the composer of the Guthrunarhvot borrowed a few stanzas as the introduction for his poem, and which the composer of the extant, or “new,” Hamthesmol likewise used, though far more clumsily.

The title “Guthrunarhvot,” which appears in the Codex Regius, really applies only to stanzas 1–8, all presumably borrowed from the “old” ballad of Hamther. The rest of the poem is simply another Guthrun lament, following the tradition exemplified by the first and second Guthrun lays; it is possible, indeed, that it is made up of fragments of two separate laments, one (stanzas 9–18) involving the story of Svanhild’s death, and the other (stanzas 19–21) coming from an otherwise lost version of the story in which Guthrun closely follows Sigurth and Brynhild in death. In any event the present title is really a misnomer; the poet, who presumably was an eleventh century Icelander, used the episode of Guthrun’s inciting her sons to vengeance for the slaying of Svanhild simply as an introduction to his main subject, the last lament of the unhappy queen.

The text of the poem in Regius is by no means in good shape, and editorial emendations have been many and varied, particularly in interchanging lines between the Guthrunarhvot and the Hamthesmol. The Volsungasaga paraphrases the poem with such fidelity as to prove that it lay before the compilers of the saga approximately in its present form.

Guthrun's Inciting

Guthrun went forth to the sea after she had slain Atli. She went out
into the sea and fain would drown herself, but she could not sink. The
waves bore her across the fjord to the land of King Jonak; he took her
as wife; their sons were Sorli and Erp and Hamther. There was brought
up Svanhild, Sigurth’s daughter; she was married to the mighty
Jormunrek. With him was Bikki, who counselled that Randver, the king’s
son, should have her. This Bikki told to the king. The king had Randver
hanged, and Svanhild trodden to death under horses’ feet. And when
Guthrun learned this, she spake with her sons.

A word-strife I learned, | most woeful of all,
A speech from the fullness | of sorrow spoken,
When fierce of heart | her sons to the fight
Did Guthrun whet | with words full grim.

“Bloody revenge | didst have for thy brothers,
Evil and sore, | when thy sons didst slay;
Else yet might we all | on Jormunrek
Together our sister’s | slaying avenge.

“. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
The gear of the Hunnish | kings now give us!
Thou hast whetted us so | to the battle of swords.”

Laughing did Guthrun | go to her chamber,
The helms of the kings | from the cupboards she took,
And mail-coats broad, | to her sons she bore them;
On their horses’ backs | the heroes leaped.

Weeping Guthrun, | Gjuki’s daughter,
Went sadly before | the gate to sit,
And with tear-stained cheeks | to tell the tale
Of her mighty griefs, | so many in kind.

“Three home-fires knew I, | three hearths I knew,
Home was I brought | by husbands three;
But Sigurth only | of all was dear,
He whom my brothers | brought to his death.

“A greater sorrow | I saw not nor knew,
Yet more it seemed | I must suffer yet
When the princes great | to Atli gave me.

“The brave boys I summoned | to secret speech;
For my woes requital | I might not win
Till off the heads | of the Hniflungs I hewed.

“To the sea I went, | my heart full sore
For the Norns, whose wrath | I would now escape;
But the lofty billows | bore me undrowned,
Till to land I came, | so I longer must live.

“Then to the bed— | of old was it better!—
Of a King of the folk | a third time I came;
Boys I bore | his heirs to be,
Heirs so young, | the sons of Jonak.

“But round Svanhild | handmaidens sat,
She was dearest ever | of all my children;
So did Svanhild | seem in my hall
As the ray of the sun | is fair to see.

“The sorest it was | when Sigurth mine
On his couch, of victory | robbed, they killed;
And grimmest of all | when to Gunnar’s heart
There crept the bright-hued | crawling snakes.

“And keenest of all | when they cut the heart
From the living breast | of the king so brave;
Many woes I remember, | . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .

“Bridle, Sigurth, | thy steed so black,
Hither let run | thy swift-faring horse;
Here there sits not | son or daughter
Who yet to Guthrun | gifts shall give.

“Remember, Sigurth, | what once we said,
When together both | on the bed we sat,
That mightily thou | to me wouldst come
From hell and I | from earth to thee.

“Pile ye up, jarls, | the pyre of oak,
Make it the highest | a hero e’er had;
Let the fire burn | my grief-filled breast,
My sore-pressed heart, | till my sorrows melt.”

May nobles all | less sorrow know,
And less the woes | of women become,
Since the tale of this | lament is told.

Colophon

The Guðrúnarhvöt ("Guthrun's Inciting") is the penultimate poem of the Codex Regius and the point where the Völsung cycle meets the Ermanarich cycle for the last time. The first eight stanzas preserve the incitement proper — a mother arming her sons for a suicide raid — but the real body of the poem is the lament that follows, in which Guthrun surveys the wreckage of her entire life. Three husbands, two brothers, murdered sons, a trampled daughter, and at the end an appeal to the dead Sigurth to ride back from Hel. The final stanza — the poet's own voice, praying that all nobles know less sorrow — closes a lament cycle that stretches back through three Guthrun lays, the Atli poems, and Sigurth's death. It is one of the most sustained portraits of grief in European literature.

Translated by Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1923). Digitised text from Project Gutenberg (ebook #73533).

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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